The trip back across the lagoon to San Marco took just over fifteen minutes, and Diego explained the strict speed limit in the lagoon. In Venice’s narrow canals, the limit was no more than five kilometres per hour, little more than walking pace, for fear that the bow waves of passing boats might disturb the foundations of the surrounding properties. Anna had explained to me before I left home that almost all of the wonderful buildings in this unique city – including the duomo itself – weren’t built on dry land or solid foundations, but on wooden piles, driven into the mud below. Little wonder the city was living on borrowed time.
Diego dropped Mary and me off alongside the gondola rank at the entrance to St Mark’s square, and we instantly found ourselves in the midst of a mass of humanity. We arranged to meet back again in half an hour and Mary disappeared in the direction of the massive, white marble façade of the cathedral, while Oscar and I set off past the amazingly slim, tall belltower and into the piazza. How this managed to stay upright on foundations of wood was beyond me. As we threaded our way through the crowd, heading diagonally across the square to where the café was situated underneath a seemingly endless row of stone arches on the far side, I saw faces and heard voices from all over the globe.
I checked my watch and saw that it was exactly three o’clock and, in case I might have any doubts, bells all over the city began striking the hour. The arrangement Virgilio had made with his friend was that she would be sitting out in the square in front of the café with a cardboard box on her table. Almost all of thetables were taken, and it took me a few moments before I spotted the cardboard box on one right at the back. Oscar and I were already making our way in that direction when the woman with the box saw us and waved to attract our attention. Presumably, Virgilio had told her to look out for a man with a big, black dog. I waved back and walked up to her. She stood up as I approached and gave me a friendly smile.
‘Dan? There can’t be too many tall men with black Labradors walking around Piazza San Marco.’ She was probably in her early forties and she had chestnut hair and a wedding ring on her left hand. Her eyes were emerald green and penetrating, and I had a feeling she didn’t miss much.
I smiled back and held out my hand. ‘And you must be Giulia.’
We shook hands, and I sat down alongside her, looking out onto the sea of tourists in the square, while Oscar gave Giulia a warm greeting. A very smart waiter wearing a white uniform with enough gold braid for an admiral of the fleet appeared at my shoulder and enquired what I would like to drink. Giulia had a little espresso in front of her, but I ordered an alcohol-free beer as it was so hot. Fortunately – or more probably, wisely – she had chosen a table in the shade, and I was glad of that – for Oscar’s sake and for mine.
She pushed the cardboard box, the size of a shoebox, across the table towards me. ‘Virgilio’s precious Murano vase.’ She grinned. ‘Now that he’s been promoted tocommissario, it looks like he’s joined the super-rich.’
Ascommissariois roughly the same rank as chief inspector, I felt I had to set the record straight. ‘I’m afraid that police pay is a long way off those heights – in Italy or in England.’
She caught my eye. ‘You don’t need to tell me.’ She gave a shrug of the shoulders, and I picked up on her words.
‘Are you a police officer as well?’ When Virgilio had told me he had a friend in Venice, I had wondered whether it might be somebody in the Venice force.
‘I’m a detective inspector. I gather from Virgilio that you were acommissarioat Scotland Yard. I’ve read enough detective stories to know how grand that place must be.’
I smiled back at her. ‘I can think of many adjectives to apply to working at Scotland Yard, but I don’t think “grand” would figure too highly. So, what’s it like being a cop in Venice? London or Florence are bad enough with millions of visitors every year, but the sheer numbers coming into Venice must cause all sorts of problems for you.’
At that moment, the waiter returned with my beer and Giulia waited until he’d left again before replying. ‘To be honest, when you consider how many tourists come here, they don’t cause too much serious trouble. Most of them are sensible enough not to go around committing murders when they’ve got all this wonderful architecture to look at. No, most of my problems are related to themalavita.’
Malavitais a word the Italians use to describe the criminal underworld, particularly organised crime. Italy has quite a selection of home-grown criminal organisations ranging from the traditional Sicilian Mafia to some very unpleasant iterations such as the ’Ndrangheta or Camorra. Here in Venice, as Giulia went on to tell me, these were only the tip of the iceberg.
‘As well as Italian criminals, we’ve seen increasing activity from gangs with connections to Albania, Slovakia and even China. When they aren’t fighting each other, they squabble amongst themselves. You’d be amazed how often we have to pull bodies out of the canals.’
‘And what are they fighting about? Are these turf wars for protection rackets, prostitution, drugs or what?’
‘Drugs, mainly. As you can imagine, with so many vessels coming in and out every day, it’s hard to keep a check on all of them. We work closely with theGuardia di Finanza, and they’ve had some spectacular successes recently. A few years ago, they managed to recover eight hundred and fifty kilos of cocaine hidden in the hull of a Greek vessel that arrived from Brazil. The estimated street value was a hundred and fifty million euros. You can see why the bad guys might fight to get hold of something like that.’
TheGuardia di Finanzais a separate force in Italy, working in parallel with thePoliziaandCarabinieri, principally concerned with financial matters, including smuggling. In our modern world of Internet fraud, I felt sure they had their hands full and, by the sound of it, here in Venice, smuggling was the name of the game.
Giulia and I chatted, and she sounded fascinated by my decision to open my own private investigation agency. She asked me if I was here on business or pleasure, and I told her I was taking part in a murder mystery weekend on the Island of the Swans. I didn’t mention Alice Graceland by name, nor did I say that she was a film star. Giulia was clearly familiar with the island, but she hadn’t realised – although she wasn’t surprised – that the new owner was a foreigner. Virgilio had apparently told her about my books and she sounded intrigued. When I told her that my first book,Death Amidthe Vines, had now come out in Italian, she promised to buy a copy and read it.
‘One thing I regret is not having worked harder at English when I was at school.’ She waved her hands vaguely in the direction of the crowds around us. ‘There’s no getting away from it, the international language of communication these days is English, and mine is decidedly broken. I’ll certainly read your book now I know that it’s available in Italian.’
I thoroughly enjoyed chatting to her but, all too soon, it was time for me to go and catch my lift back to the island. We shook hands and exchanged phone numbers before I picked up the precious parcel. ‘I’ll see that Virgilio gets this on Monday. Any time you’re coming down to Florence, give me a call, and Virgilio and I will see that you get a good meal.’
9
FRIDAY AFTERNOON
When we got back to the island, I thanked Diego and went to my room with Oscar. When I got there, I dug his bowl out of my bag and gave him a long drink of cold water. I then turned my attention to a large paper parcel I saw lying on my bed. Sure enough, wrapped in brown paper was my costume for the murder mystery session tomorrow evening and for the dummy run tonight. I tipped the contents onto the bed and took stock.
It looked ominously similar to the costume I had had to wear on the set of the movie a couple of years back when I had met Selena Gardner and, more importantly, Anna. That movie, too, had been set in Renaissance times. I unfolded each of the articles and studied them. On top of the pile, there was a papier mâché mask that looked chilling. It wasn’t a full face mask but more of a half-mask, covering the top half of the face. It was a sinister black with red around the eyeholes with a long, curved, beaky nose almost covering my mouth. I had a feeling it would be next to impossible to eat or drink while wearing something like this, but what lay below it was even worse. There was a white silk – or imitation silk – shirt, over which I would wear a deep-blue, velvetsleeveless gilet, trimmed with silver braid. That wasn’t the problem, but my heart sank as I spotted the next article of clothing. It was a pair of baggy, blue and yellow pantaloons, composed of stripes of blue velvet and white silk. To make matters worse, there was a floppy hat, also made of blue velvet, with silver trimmings and a tassel at the back. I picked it up and spotted, nestling innocently underneath everything, what I’d been dreading most of all: a packet containing a pair of blue tights.
Oscar had finished his water by now and was sniffing the costume with interest. I don’t know whether it stirred a distant memory in him, but he glanced up at me, and there was no mistaking the expression on his face. He was giving me a big, hairy, toothy, canine grin.
I didn’t grin back.
‘It’s all right for you; nobody’s makingyoudress up. I just hope all the activity takes place inside air-conditioned rooms, or at night. A combination of heavy velvet clothes, the silly hat and tights is going to make life pretty damn uncomfortable in this heat.’
Still, I told myself, I had no choice, so I would have to grin and bear it – or at least bear it while grinding my teeth. I checked the time and saw that it was already five o’clock, so that didn’t leave me much time before the dress rehearsal. I took Oscar outside again and let him wander about, sniffing his surroundings, while I sat down on a stone bench and called Anna to check that she’d got safely to her friend’s place in the Apennines and to give her a progress report. I felt quite jealous when she told me that she was up at fifteen hundred metres, where the temperature was a very pleasant twenty-one degrees. I told her that here in Venice it was at least 50 per cent hotter than that and when I related what I was going to have to wear tonight, I could hear her giggling.
‘I’m beginning to wish I’d come with you now. I do love dressing up in Renaissance costume. But you’ve always enjoyed it as well, haven’t you?’
